Wednesday, January 11, 2012

(Britin here.) We haven't kept up with the blog as much as we would have liked this season, but the lack of time to dedicate to this forum was thankfully filled with an incredible year of growth for AGB. Opening our shop on Quail St. has widened our audience significantly, especially due to Nick's ability to transform simple, fresh (local) ingredients into incredible lunch fare. Everyone who has visited the shop has been very welcoming and enthusiastic, for which we couldn't be more grateful. We've gotten to know a lot of regulars this year - one of my personal favorite aspects of our "job" (it's hard to call it that- we are both really enjoying living the dream).

When we began renting our kitchen on Quail in November 2010, it was for the sole purpose of executing our first Community Supported Bakery season. We didn't intend to open up for retail, but when our landlord (Mark Guido of Guido's Frozen Desserts) said, "You're paying all of the overhead, the lights are on - why not open?", we started thinking seriously about it. Nick and I have worked in restaurants since we were both 15 years old, and met while working in one in '03. Virtually since that day, we started talking about what we would do if we opened our own place. Guido's suggestion rang in our heads all that winter and we took the plunge in April of this year.

Most people in the Pine Hills neighborhood & surrounding Albany have welcomed us with open arms. Business owners, families, neighborhood associations, organizers, beat cops - all of our customers have all been wonderful to get to know and we are grateful for the opportunty to do so. We have participated in every way we can to be good neighbors, highlight the great aspects of the neighborhood and to be advocates for changing what needs improvement. Unfortunately, limited parking, street trash, vandalism and sporadic violence plague the Education District. Although some issues are being addressed, we reluctantly accept that meaningful change is likely to be a long time coming.

By late October, the reality started to sink in that our location on Quail St. just isn't the ideal venue for what we do, and we began entertaining the thought of moving the shop. One major reason is that our rent increased in December. We knew it would happen, we just didn't realize by how much and there's only so much we can produce fresh in our tiny kitchen in order to support the extra overhead. Gatherer's Granola has continued to rent from us three days per week, and has been putting out an enormous amount of granola to local farmers markets and co-ops. They are growing, too, and are looking for a larger production space.
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The retail area at 540 Delaware Ave., still small, but bigger than we have now!

﻿﻿We started working with the Community Loan Fund of the Capital Region and contemplated a few spots for a new building. The one that has been calling our names for years, 540 Delaware Avenue, was vacant, and offered a multitude of improvements: Three times the square footage, 10 parking spaces, a slightly larger retail area, reasonable rent, fully-installed fire-suppression system (with fans and hood - a huge expense!), better quality finishes, on a main thoroughfare, accessible to our Delmar customers (but still in Albany) and we could walk to work in good weather! Just last week, we closed on a modest loan with the great folks over at the CLF (big thanks to Lissa, Joe, Walt and the Board!), and LAST NIGHT we signed the lease on 540 Delware Ave.! We've lived in the DelSo neighborhood since moving here in 2003 - having our bakery here will be an absolute dream come true for us. We'll start acquiring equipment and navigating the city permitting process next week. We're hoping to open sometime between mid-February and mid-March, and will operate on Quail St. until then.

We'll be open 5 days per week, add more lunch and breakfast options, hire two staff members, increase our loaf varieties & share programs, and hopefully grow some of our own produce in a kitchen garden out back. We'll continue to use primarily local suppliers, prepare everything fresh, maintain our low-waste practices and hopefully be seeing more of you! We hope making this move will bring positive, measured growth for our bakery and our family - and we couldn't be more excited!!

More detailed information will follow as we progress. We hope you share our enthusiasm!